Speak

  MISS

  Merryweather In-School Suspension. This is my Consequence. It is in my contract. It’s true what they tell you about not signing anything without reading it carefully. Even better, pay a lawyer to read it carefully.

  The guidance counselor dreamed up the contract after our cozy get-together in the principal’s office. It lists a million things I’m not supposed to do and the consequences I’ll suffer if I do them. The consequences for minor offenses like being late to class or not participating were stupid—they wanted me to write an essay—so I took another day off school and Bingo! I earned a trip to MISS.

  It’s a classroom painted white, with uncomfortable chairs and a lamp that buzzes like an angry hive. The inmates of MISS are commanded to sit and stare at the empty walls. It is supposed to bore us into submission or prepare us for an insane asylum.

  Our guard dog today is Mr. Neck. He curls his lip and growls at me. I think this is part of his punishment for that bigoted crap he pulled in class. There are two other convicts with me. One has a cross tattooed on his shaved skull. He sits like a graniteboy waiting for a chisel so he can carve himself out of the mountainside. The other kid looks completely normal. His clothes are a little freaky maybe, but that’s a misdemeanor here, not a felony. When Mr. Neck gets up to greet a late arival, the normal-looking kid tells me he likes to start fires.

  Our last companion is Andy Evans. My breakfast turns to hydrochloric acid. He grins at Mr. Neck and sits down next to me.

  Mr. Neck: “Cutting again, Andy?”

  Andy Beast: “No sir. One of your colleagues thinks I have an authority problem. Can you believe it?”

  Mr. Neck: “No more talking.”

  I am BunnyRabbit again, hiding in the open. I sit like I have an egg in my mouth. One move, one word, and the egg will shatter and blow up the world.

  I am getting seriously weird in the head.

  When Mr. Neck isn’t looking, Andy blows in my ear.

  I want to kill him.

  PICASSO

  I can’t do anything, not even in art class. Mr. Freeman, a pro at staring out the window himself, thinks he knows what’s wrong. “Your imagination is paralyzed,” he declares. “You need to take a trip.” Ears perk up all over the classroom and someone turns down the radio. A trip? Is he planning a field trip? “You need to visit the mind of a Great One,” continues Mr. Freeman. Papers flutter as the class sighs. The radio sings louder again.

  He pushes my pitiful linoleum block aside and gently sets down an enormous book. “Picasso.” He whispers like a priest. “Picasso. Who saw the truth. Who painted the truth, molded it, ripped from the earth with two angry hands.” He pauses. “But I’m getting carried away.” I nod. “See Picasso,” he commands. “I can’t do everything for you. You must walk alone to find your soul.”

  Blah, blah, yeah. Looking at pictures would be better than watching snow drift. I open the book.

  Picasso sure had a thing for naked women. Why not draw them with their clothes on? Who sits around without a shirt on, plucking a mandolin? Why not draw naked guys, just to be fair? Naked women is art, naked guys a no-no, I bet. Probably because most painters are men.

  I don’t like the first chapters. Besides all the naked women, he painted these blue pictures, like he ran out of red and green for a few weeks. He painted circus people and some dancers who look like they are standing in smog. He should have made them cough.

  The next chapter steals my breath away. It takes me out of the room. It confuses me, while one little part of my brain jumps up and down screaming, “I get it! I get it!” Cubism. Seeing beyond what is on the surface. Moving both eyes and a nose to the side of the face. Dicing bodies and tables and guitars as if they were celery sticks, and rearranging them so that you have to really see them to see them. Amazing. What did the world look like to him?

  I wish he had gone to high school at Merryweather. I bet we could have hung out. I search the whole book and never see one picture of a tree. Maybe Picasso couldn’t do trees either. Why did I get stuck with such a lame idea? I sketch a Cubist tree with hundreds of skinny rectangles for branches. They look like lockers, boxes, glass shards, lips with triangle brown leaves. I drop the sketch on Mr. Freeman’s desk. “Now you’re getting somewhere,” he says. He gives me a thumbs-up.

  RIDING SHOTGUN

  I am a good girl. I go to every single class for a week. It feels good to know what the teachers are talking about again. My parents get the news flash from the guidance counselor. They aren’t sure how to react—happy because I’m behaving, or angrier still that they have to be happy about such a minor thing as a kid who goes to class every day.

  The guidance counselor convinces them I need a reward—a chew toy or something. They settle on new clothes. I’m outgrowing everything I own.

  But shopping with my mother? Just shoot me and put me out of my misery. Anything but a shopping trip with Mom. She hates shopping with me. At the mall she stalks ahead, chin high, eyelids twitching because I won’t try on the practical, “stylish” clothes she likes. Mother is the rock, I am the ocean. I have to pout and roll my eyes for hours until she finally wears down and crumbles into a thousand grains of beach sand. It takes a lot of energy. I don’t think I have it in me.

  Apparently, Mom isn’t up to the drag ‘n’ whine mall gig either. When they announce I’ve earned new clothes, they add that I have to get them at Effert’s, so Mom can use her discount. I’m supposed to take the bus after school and meet her at the store. In a way, I’m glad. Get in, buy, get out, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  It seems like a good idea until I’m standing at the bus stop in front of school as a blizzard rips through the county. The wind chill must be twenty below and I don’t have a hat or mittens. I try keeping my back to the wind, but my rear end freezes. Facing it is impossible. The snow blows up under my eyelids and fills my ears. That’s why I don’t hear the car pull up next to me. When the horn blows, I nearly jump out of my skin. It’s Mr. Freeman. “Need a ride?”

  Mr. Freeman’s car shocks me. It is a blue Volvo, a safe Swedish box. I had him figured for an old VW bus. It is clean. I had visions of art supplies, posters and rotting fruit everywhere. When I get in, classical music plays quietly. Will wonders never cease.

  He says dropping me off in the city is only a little out of his way. He’d love to meet my mother. My eyes widen in fear. “Maybe not,” he says. I brush the melting snow from my head and hold my hands in front of the heating vent. He turns the fan up full-blast.

  As I thaw, I count the mileage markers on the side of the road, keeping an eye out for interesting roadkill. We get a lot of dead deer in the suburbs. Sometimes poor people take the venison for their winter’s meat, but most of the time the carcasses rot until their skin hangs like ribbons over their bones. We head west to the big city.

  “You did a good job with that Cubist sketch,” he says. I don’t know what to say. We pass a dead dog. It doesn’t have a collar. “I’m seeing a lot of growth in your work. You are learning more than you know.”

  Me: “I don’t know anything. My trees suck.”

  Mr. Freeman puts on his turn signal, looks in the rearview mirror, pulls into the left lane, and passes a beer truck. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Art is about making mistakes and learning from them.” He pulls back into the right lane.

  I watch the beer truck fade into the snowstorm in the side mirror. Part of me thinks maybe he is driving a bit too fast, what with all the snow, but the car is heavy and doesn’t slip. The snow that had caked on my socks melts into my sneakers.

  Me: “All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.” My fingers fly up and cover my mouth. What am I doing?

  Mr. Freeman: “Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.” He sticks his finger down his throat. “The next time you work on your trees, don’t think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or
joy, or rage—whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling. When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

  He pulls off the exit and stops at the light at the bottom of the ramp. Something small and furry and dead is crumpled by the storm sewer. I chew off a scab on my thumb. The Effert’s sign blinks in the middle of the block. “Over there,” I say. “You can drop me off in front.” We sit for a moment, the snow hiding the other side of the street, a cello solo thrumming from the speakers. “Um, thanks,” I say. “Don’t mention it,” he answers. “If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me.” I unbuckle the seat belt and open the door.

  “Melinda,” Mr. Freeman says. Snow filters into the car and melts on the dashboard. “You’re a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it.”

  I close the door.

  HALL OF MIRRORS

  I stop by the manager’s office, and the secretary says my mother is on the phone. Just as well. It will be easier to find a pair of jeans without her around. I head for the “Young Ladies” section of the store. (Another reason they don’t make any money. Who wants to be called a young lady?)

  I need a size ten, as much as it kills me to admit that. Everything I own is an eight or a small. I look at my canoe feet and my wet, obnoxious anklebones. Aren’t girls supposed to stop growing at this age?

  When I was in sixth grade, my mom bought me all these books about puberty and adolescence, so I would appreciate what a “beautiful” and “natural” and “miraculous” transformation I was going through. Crap. That’s what it is. She complains all the time about her hair turning gray and her butt sagging and her skin wrinkling, but I’m supposed to be grateful for a face full of zits, hair in embarrassing places, and feet that grow an inch a night. Utter crap.

  No matter what I try on, I know I’ll hate it. Effert’s has cornered the market on completely unfashionable clothes. Clothes that grandmas buy for your birthday. It’s a fashion graveyard. Just get a pair that fits, I tell myself. One pair—that’s the goal. I look around. No Mom. I carry three pairs of the least offensive jeans into the dressing room. I am the only person trying anything on. The first pair is way too small—I can’t even get them over my butt. I don’t bother with the second pair; they are a smaller size. The third pair is huge. Exactly what I’m looking for.

  I scurry out to the three-way mirror. With an extra-large sweatshirt over the top, you can hardly tell that they are Effert’s jeans. Still no Mom. I adjust the mirror so I can see reflections of reflections, miles and miles of me and my new jeans. I hook my hair behind my ears. I should have washed it. My face is dirty. I lean into the mirror. Eyes after eyes after eyes stare back at me. Am I in there somewhere? A thousand eyes blink. No makeup. Dark circles. I pull the side flaps of the mirror in closer, folding myself into the looking glass and blocking out the rest of the store.

  My face becomes a Picasso sketch, my body slicing into dissecting cubes. I saw a movie once where a woman was burned over eighty percent of her body and they had to wash all the dead skin off. They wrapped her in bandages, kept her drugged, and waited for skin grafts. They actually sewed her into a new skin.

  I push my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand bleeding, crusted lips push back. What does it feel like to walk in a new skin? Was she completely sensitive like a baby, or numb, without nerve endings, just walking in a skin bag? I exhale and my mouth disappears in a fog. I feel like my skin has been burned off. I stumble from thornbush to thornbush—my mother and father who hate each other, Rachel who hates me, a school that gags on me like I’m a hairball. And Heather.

  I just need to hang on long enough for my new skin to graft. Mr. Freeman thinks I need to find my feelings. How can I not find them? They are chewing me alive like an infestation of thoughts, shame, mistakes. I squeeze my eyes shut. Jeans that fit, that’s a good start. I have to stay away from the closet, go to all my classes. I will make myself normal. Forget the rest of it.

  GERMINATION

  We’ve finished the plant unit in biology. Ms. Keen drops ten-pound hints that the test will focus on seeds. I study.

  How seeds get planted: This is actually cool. Some plants spit their seeds into the wind. Others make seeds yummy enough for birds to eat, so they get pooped out on passing cars. Plants make way more seeds than they need, because they know that life is not perfect and all the seeds won’t make it. Kind of smart, when you think about it. People used to do that, too—have twelve or fifteen kids because they figured some would die, some would turn out rotten, and a couple would be hardworking, honest farmers. Who knew how to plant seeds.

  What seeds need to germinate: Seeds are inefficient. If the seed is planted too deep, it doesn’t warm up at the right time. Plant it too close to the surface and a crow eats it. Too much rain and the seed molds. Not enough rain and it never gets started. Even if it does manage to sprout, it can be choked by weeds, rooted up by a dog, mashed by a soccer ball, or asphyxiated by car exhaust.

  It’s amazing anything survives.

  How plants grow: Quickly. Most plants grow fast and die young. People get seventy years, a bean plant gets four months, maybe five. Once the itty-bitty baby plant peeks out of the ground, it sprouts leaves, so it can absorb more sun. Then it sleeps, eats, and sunbathes until it’s ready to flower—a teenage plant. This is a bad time to be a rose or a zinnia or a marigold, because people attack with scissors and cut off what’s pretty. But plants are cool. If the rose is picked, the plant grows another one. It needs to bloom to produce more seeds.

  I am going to ace this test.

  BOLOGNA EXILE

  My cafeteria strategy has changed since I have no friends in the known universe. First off, I don’t go through the line for anything, to avoid that vulnerable moment of coming out into the lunchroom, that moment when every head lifts and evaluates: friend, enemy, or loser.

  So I brown-bag it. I had to write a note to my mother asking her to buy lunch bags, bologna, and little containers of applesauce. The note made her happy. She came home from the store with all kinds of junk food I could take. Maybe I should start talking to Them, maybe a little bit. But what if I say the wrong thing?

  Bologna girl, that’s me.

  I try to read while eating alone, but the noise gets between my eyes and the page and I can’t see through it. I observe. I pretend I’m a scientist, on the outside looking in, the way Ms. Keen describes her days watching rats get lost in mazes.

  The Marthas don’t look lost. They sit in formation, a new girl in my old seat—a sophomore who just moved here from Oregon. Her clothes have a dangerously high percentage of polyester. She needs to get that taken care of. They nibble carrot sticks and olives, spread pate onto stone-ground wheat crackers and trade bites of goat cheese. Meg ‘n’ Emily ‘n’ Heather drink cranberry-apricot juice. Too bad I can’t buy stock in the juice company—I am watching a trend in the making.

  Are they talking about me? They’re certainly laughing enough. I chomp my sandwich and it barfs mustard on my shirt. Maybe they’re planning the next Project. They could mail snowballs to the weather-deprived children in Texas. They could knit goat-hair blankets for shorn sheep. I imagine what Heather might look like in ten years, after two children and seventy pounds. It helps a little.

  Rachel/Rachelle takes a seat at the end of my table with Hana, the exchange student from Egypt. Rachel/Rachelle is now experimenting with Islam. She wears a scarf on her head and some brown-and-red gauzy harem pants. Her eyes are ringed with black eyeliner thick as crayon. I think I see her looking at me, but I’m probably wrong. Hana wears jeans and a Gap T-shirt. They eat hummus and pita and titter in French.

  There is a sprinkling of losers like me scattered among the
happy teenagers, prunes in the oatmeal of school. The others have the social power to sit with other losers. I’m the only one sitting alone, under the glowing neon sign which reads, “Complete and Total Loser, Not Quite Sane. Stay Away. Do Not Feed.”

  I go to the rest room to turn my shirt around so the mustard stain is hidden under my hair.